Lewis Hamilton has admitted that he ‘doesn’t care’ whether or not he finishes ahead of Mercedes team-mate George Russell in the Drivers’ Championship standings following a miserable Brazilian Grand Prix.
The seven-time world champion was dealing with an unco-operative race car throughout the entire weekend in Sao Paulo and, after finishing outside of the points in the sprint, was forced to battle Liam Lawson and Sergio Perez for P10 at the end of the Grand Prix.
Team-mate Russell took the chequered flag in P4 and, according to Lando Norris, deserved to win the race having led from the opening corner until the virtual safety car on lap 28. That result flipped the two Mercedes drivers around in the standings with Hamilton dropping to P7, two points behind his colleague.
Speaking after the race in Interlagos, a downbeat Hamilton said: “I just put my focus on something else. I’m not fighting for the championship, it doesn’t really matter where we finish in the championship.
“I don’t care if I finish ahead of George [Russell] or behind George, it doesn’t make that big of a difference to me. I just want to keep the car out of the wall and try to score points if I can for the team. If I can finish well and they give me a car that doesn’t bounce off the track in the next few races, then hopefully we get a better result. Looking forward to Christmas.”
Despite registering two wins in a magical three-race stretch before the summer break, 2024 has been a disappointing farewell tour for Hamilton and Mercedes. With McLaren and Ferrari steaming further ahead in terms of performance, another victory before the season’s close looks just short of impossible.
Working against Hamilton is the unpredictability of his W15. Onboard footage from himself and Russell in Interlagos showed that the 39-year-old was struggling for traction on the exit of low-speed corners, slipping and sliding over the rain-soaked tarmac, while his team-mate enjoyed a stable, albeit equally bumpy ride.
Things could get even more painful in the Brit’s final three races. Explaining the approach for the remainder of 2024, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin explained: “We are not bringing any more major updates to the car.
“It might be that we have some test items, some small bits of bodywork that we are looking at, but this would be very much in the context of learning for the future.
“There will be lots of opportunity to do set up work, lots of opportunity to use the two cars to compare different approaches and hopefully over the next few races, we can just add to the learning we have already made during this season.”
